Neither of them had moved since Tesla had seen the pistol. Neither of them moved now, in the stretching silence. A breeze rustled the leaves in the acacia behind the hut. Sweat trickled down Tesla’s spine.

“Who are you? What do you want with Harold?”

He laughed. “I suppose you had to ask that, but you know I won’t tell you. But it’s about your work, Leonora.”

“The Volunteers?”

His smile was bitter. “Your work. So. You really don’t know where Middleton is? Not even if I shoot you?”

A gunshot roar ricocheted off the tin roof and mud walls; Tesla stumbled, grasped the plank table for support as clay shards flew everywhere. She found herself staring into Schmidt’s mild eyes. Wheezing a few breaths, quieting her heart by an act of will, she answered him.

“Even if you shoot me. I don’t know.”

Schmidt nodded. “All right. You don’t know where he’d go if he were in trouble. I suppose then we’ll have to depend on what he’d do, if you were in trouble.” He stood. “Come.”

“What?”

“As you said: We’ll be covering a lot of ground.”

She walked ahead of the gun out onto the uneven baked earth. The glaring sunlight was unforgiving; she did not turn, but waited. There: a stutter in his step, a whisper of plastic on fabric. Behind her, Schmidt reached into his pocket for his sunglasses, she dropped down and rolled into him. He stumbled; she yanked his ankle forward, threw her weight sideways into his other knee. Dust boiled as he thudded to the ground. Another shot screamed, but out here in the endless bush it didn’t thunder, and she’d been prepared to hear it. The gun waved wildly, looking for her, but by the second shot she was in the hut and by the third she’d hurled a clay pot with the force and accuracy of Yaa Asantewa’s spear.

In the whirling dust, Schmidt—and more important, the gun—was still.

Forcing her breathing even, Tesla crouched by the door, waiting. When all had been motionless for a full minute, she crept to the table, reached down for one of the soda bottles and flung it at Schmidt’s head. On impact it smashed into glittering shards, but Schmidt didn’t move.

Slowly, she rose. She made her way to where Schmidt lay in the settling dust. His blood trickled into the dry soil amid the shards of a once-beautiful pot. There, you see, Leonora? This time you were on the side of the dust. And the predator always wins.

Her first steps back inside took her to the plastic water bucket in her makeshift sink. She scooped with her hands, splashed water over her face and head as though here, at the edge of the Namib, water was hers to waste.